Guy De Maupassant: Trending quotes

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Guy De Maupassant: 118 quotes9 likes

“Legitimized love always despises its easygoing brother.”

Guy De Maupassant book Boule de Suif

Boule de Suif (1880)

“With women there is neither caste nor rank, for beauty, grace and charm take the place of family and birth. Natural ingenuity, instinct for what is elegant, a supple mind are their sole hierarchy, and often make of women of the people the equals of the very greatest ladies.
Mathilde suffered ceaselessly, feeling herself born to enjoy all delicacies and all luxuries.”

Guy De Maupassant

La Parure (The Necklace) (1884)

“A man forced to spend his life without ever having the right, without ever finding the time, to shut himself up all alone, no matter where, to think, to reflect, to work, to dream? Ah! my dear boy, a key, the key of a door which one can lock — this is happiness, mark you, the only happiness!”

Guy De Maupassant

"The Question of Latin"

“Since governments take the right of death over their people, it is not astonishing if the people should sometimes take the right of death over governments.”

Guy De Maupassant book Sur l'eau

Sur l’eau (1888)

“They held up to admiration all those women who from time to time have arrested the victorious progress of conquerors, made of their bodies a field of battle, a means of ruling, a weapon; who have vanquished by their heroic caresses hideous or detested beings, and sacrificed their chastity to vengeance and devotion.
All was said with due restraint and regard for propriety, the effect heightened now and then by an outburst of forced enthusiasm calculated to excite emulation.
A listener would have thought at last that the one role of woman on earth was a perpetual sacrifice of her person, a continual abandonment of herself to the caprices of a hostile soldiery.
The two nuns seemed to hear nothing, and to be lost in thought. Boule de Suif also was silent.”

Guy De Maupassant book Boule de Suif

Boule de Suif (1880)

“What would have happened if she had not lost that necklace? Who knows? who knows? How strange and changeful is life! How small a thing is needed to make or ruin us!”

Guy De Maupassant

Variant translation:
What would have happened if she had not lost that necklace? Who knows? Who knows? How singular life is, how changeable! What a little thing it takes to save you or to lose you.
La Parure (The Necklace) (1884)

“Military men are the scourges of the world.”

Guy De Maupassant book Sur l'eau

Sur l’eau (1888)

“I have come to the conclusion that the bed comprehends our whole life; for we were bom in it, we live in it, and we shall die in it.”

Guy De Maupassant

"The Bed"

“Let them respect my convictions, and I will respect theirs!”

Guy De Maupassant

"Friend Joseph"

“That was perhaps the only woman I have ever loved — no — that I ever should have loved. Ah, well! who can tell? Circumstances rule one. And then — and then — all passes.”

Guy De Maupassant book The Wreck

The Wreck

“There are in France some fifty thousand young men of good birth and fairly well off who are encouraged to live a life of complete idleness. They must either cease to exist or must come to see that there can be no happiness, no health even, without regular daily labor of some sort … The need of work is in me.”

Guy De Maupassant

As quoted in Contemporary Portraits (1920) by Frank Harris, p. 263

“The count uttered several rather risky witticisms, but so tactfully were they said that his audience could not help smiling. Loiseau in turn made some considerably broader jokes, but no one took offence; and the thought expressed with such brutal directness by his wife was uppermost in the minds of all: "Since it's the girl's trade, why should she refuse this man more than another?"”

Guy De Maupassant book Boule de Suif

Boule de Suif (1880)

“No one looked at her, no one thought of her. She felt herself swallowed up in the scorn of these virtuous creatures, who had first sacrificed, then rejected her as a thing useless and unclean.”

Guy De Maupassant book Boule de Suif

Boule de Suif (1880)

“In the cold light of the morning they almost bore a grudge against the girl for not having secretly sought out the Prussian, that the rest of the party might receive a joyful surprise when they awoke. What more simple?
Besides, who would have been the wiser? She might have saved appearances by telling the officer that she had taken pity on their distress. Such a step would be of so little consequence to her.
But no one as yet confessed to such thoughts.”

Guy De Maupassant book Boule de Suif

Boule de Suif (1880)

“At first no one spoke. Boule de Suif dared not even raise her eyes. She felt at once indignant with her neighbors, and humiliated at having yielded to the Prussian into whose arms they had so hypocritically cast her.”

Guy De Maupassant book Boule de Suif

Boule de Suif (1880)

“I was hard hit. I wanted to ask this little girl to marry me. If we had passed eight days together, I should have done so! How weak and incomprehensible a man sometimes is!”

Guy De Maupassant book The Wreck

The Wreck

“Let us protest and let us be angry, let us be indignant, or let us be enthusiastic, Schopenhauer has marked humanity with the seal of his disdain and of his disenchantment.
A disabused pleasure-seeker, he overthrew beliefs, hopes, poetic ideals and chimeras, destroyed the aspirations, ravaged the confidence of souls, killed love, dragged down the chivalrous worship of women, crushed the illusions of hearts, and accomplished the most gigantic task ever attempted by scepticism. He spared nothing with his mocking spirit, and exhausted everything. And even to-day those who execrate him seem to carry in their own souls particles of his thought.”

Guy De Maupassant

"Beside Schopenhauer's Corpse"

“I took the book from him reverently, and I gazed at these forms incomprehensible to me, but which revealed the immortal thoughts of the greatest shatterer of dreams who had ever dwelt on earth.”

Guy De Maupassant

"Beside Schopenhauer's Corpse"

“I did not love her, I did not even know her. And for all that, I was touched and conquered. I wanted to save her, to sacrifice myself for her, to commit a thousand follies! Strange thing! How does it happen that the presence of a woman overwhelms us so? Is it the power of her grace which enfolds us? Is it the seduction of her beauty and youth, which intoxicates one like wine?
Is it not rather the touch of Love, of Love the Mysterious, who seeks constantly to unite two beings, who tries his strength the instant he has put a man and a woman face to face?”

Guy De Maupassant book The Wreck

The Wreck